Superman & Lois Season 4 Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Sorry for the lack of posts last week, but I got my most recent Covid shot and I didn't plan any blog posts just in case I had any side effects from the shot. I didn't, but, I still chose not to plan anything and then not be able to do it. It is however, the Christmas season once again, which means I'll be doing a few Christmas related blog posts next week and the week after, and then I will be going on my two week hiatus for Christmas and New Year's. Today though I'm gonna do a quick review for season 4 of Superman & Lois as the series finale aired last night and even though this blog has become retro and nostalgia based, I've reviewed every season of the show between my two blogs since 2021 and I wasn't going to leave out the final season. There will also be some spoilers for the season, in case you haven't watched it yet, or haven't finished watching it. So, let's get into it.

When this show was first announced I was nervous because it was another Arrowverse show airing on The CW and while Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, and Legends of Tomorrow all had strong first seasons, all four shows began dropping in quality by the third or fourth season, so I was afraid that Superman & Lois would suffer the same fate. It didn't. One of the smartest things the showrunners did was sever the show's connection to the Arrowverse in 2022. This was around the time that Batwoman, Black Lightning, Supergirl, and Legends of Tomorrow were being canceled, and the production crew was getting ready to work on season 9 of The Flash, which was that show's final season. And because the crossovers the Arrowverse producers had planned for Superman & Lois got canned due to Covid restrictions, which caused a ton of logistics issues, it made no sense to keep the show in that continuity. Despite Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch playing Superman and Lois on Supergirl and in the "Elseworlds" and "Crisis on Infinite Earths" crossovers. And I think that made the show better.

I think I was worried about season 4 the most simply because season 3 ended on Superman fighting Doomsday on the moon, and with season 4 being the final season and it being only ten episodes, I was afraid they weren't going to be able to do The Death of Superman justice in such a limited format. However, they didn't do that. Oh sure, Doomsday killed Superman, and we saw the effect his death had on Smallville, but the season was actually about Superman and Lex Luthor, played by Michael Cudlitz, which is another departure from the Arrowverse, as Jon Cryer played Lex in that show. So it feels like the writers just wanted to do a classic Superman vs. Lex Luthor story. The battles between Superman and Doomsday and the final battle between Superman and Luthor were some of the best fights I've seen in a CW DC Comics based TV show in a really long time.

While Lana, Sarah, Kyle, Jon Henry, and Nat don't appear in every episode, they still appeared throughout the season pretty regularly. Which was fine with me, because the way the media was saying it was that they would only be in one or two episodes and that's it. With a cast like this, the writers did a great job of balancing the storylines for an ensemble cast. Most shows aren't good with stuff like that.

This season, and its finale, showed that these writers and showrunners get Superman. They understand what he's about and what he's supposed to represent. Which is something the movies and past TV shows haven't really gotten right since the original Christopher Reeve movie in 1978. Supergirl sort of did, but being that Superman only appeared a handful of times as a support character for Kara, the writers on that show didn't have much of an opportunity to work with Tyler that much in terms of developing the character.

I'm glad we finally just got evil Lex Luthor without trying to make him sympathetic or try to deconstruct and analyze why he is the way he is. The comics have been trying to do that for at least 20 years, if not more, and we got seven seasons of that on Smallville in the 2000s. Michael Cudlitz did an amazing job in the role. This was something else I was nervous about just because they didn't fully introduce the character until the final two or three episodes of season 3 and so that season, outside of Lois talking about him, didn't really give me a good sense of what this version of Luthor would be like. He was great in the role though, and I loved it whenever he was on screen. Especially during his interactions with both Lois and Clark. 

I'm not entirely current on the comics, but I remember them doing a storyline where Superman revealed his identity to the world, so when they did it in the show in episode 7 of this season, I wasn't all that surprised, and unlike the million times Oliver revealed his identity as the Green Arrow to the world on Arrow, prior to the final reveal at the end of season 6, the writers didn't try to reverse it at any point in the final three episodes of the show.

One of the things that I really liked and appreciated about Superman & Lois as a whole is that The CW didn't make them ramp up the drama between the characters like they've done on other comic book based shows on the network, dating back to when it was The WB and Smallville was starting back in 2001. For the most part the network executives left the producers and writers to their own devices, so they could make the Superman show that THEY wanted to make instead of the Superman show the network and/or Warner Bros. wanted them to make. 

Overall season 4 of Superman & Lois is a great season of television, and I'm glad the show went out on a high note. I'll admit though that I am going to miss the show. This was the best show to come out of the Arrowverse, and never once did I feel it was a slog to watch. I think that's because the show was so positive. Especially in comparison to other modern superhero and comic book based movies and TV shows. If you've never seen this show before, I highly recommend it. I also recommend giving it another try if you couldn't get into it at the beginning and fell off of it after the first season.

And that my friends is it for me for today. I might do a more Christmasy blog post later in the week, but we'll see how things go. I'm supposed to be having a friend over to hang out tomorrow, but if the weather sucks, I'll just have to re-arrange things so that I do the blog post on whatever day my friend isn't coming over on. Until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.